Two years ago Ryan Kalish was the Boston Baseball Writers' choice as the Red Sox Rookie of the Year, a hard-nosed outfielder in the mold of Trot Nixon and Jim Edmonds whom his manager at Pawtucket predicted would be a "spectacular player for a lot of years" in the majors.

Although Kalish doesn't turn 25 until next month, his most productive years are beginning to dwindle, and every passing year makes him more and more of an afterthought for the Red Sox.

He's in Fort Myers right now but unable to play after undergoing yet another surgery, this time on his right shoulder, three weeks ago. It will be late summer before he'll be cleared to play again -- maybe -- and the rust that showed on his body in limited time with the Red Sox last summer will be even thicker by then.

"Honestly, I've been really down," Kalish said earlier this week. "It's just been really tough for me. I really just want to play again. At this point I'm tired of being hurt."

Kalish has played only 93 games in the minors and majors the last two years. He's endured three surgeries in the last 17 months, and there was more wasted time when doctors said rest would be the proper cure.

Once a poster boy for Red Sox baseball, Ryan Kalish might now be a dart board for the doctors and physical therapists the Red Sox have fired in recent years. No player in the organization might have been more of a victim of misdiagnoses than Kalish.

A torn labrum suffered while making a diving catch at Pawtucket early in the 2011 season has dogged him the last two years.

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Rest and rehabilitation was recommended, and then he developed a bulging disk in his neck while rehabbing.

It was August before he began playing in 2011, joining the Lowell Spinners on a rehab assignment. Three weeks later he went back on the disabled list with a sore shoulder, and he underwent neck surgery. It was a lost season for Kalish, who, if healthy, would have received significant playing time in right field for the Red Sox and possible claimed it permanently. He also submitted to surgery on the labrum in November, which would delay his return until the 2012 season was well underway.

"To be that close to being an everyday guy for this team and having it all taken away, it was hard," Kalish said during spring training in 2012. He declined to blame the club's medical staff, which had been dismissed en masse the previous fall.

"It's nobody's fault," he insisted. "You never want to rush into surgery. But the whole thing was frustrating."

Kalish's frustrations were far from over. He didn't begin playing until late May last year.

"I'm 24 years old and I have these aches and pains that I probably shouldn't have for another 15 years," he said in a radio interview in Salem, Va., where he was on a rehab assignment. "But when you get surgically repaired, your body is getting used to different things like anchors and sutures in your shoulder."

He returned to the Red Sox in mid-June but didn't look anything like the player who had excited the fans at Fenway during the last two months of the 2010 season. His right shoulder was hurting, and again the doctors said rest would be the best treatment. But when he began swinging a bat for the first time, he felt pain.

Kalish said the doctors told him to "do a normal offseason and get strong, which I did. I was feeling really good. As soon as I started swinging, I noticed it."

Hence, another surgery in late January and quite likely another lost season.

A football star at Red Bank Catholic High School in New Jersey who turned down a scholarship to Virginia to sign with the Red Sox out of the 2006 draft, Ryan Kalish knew only two ways to play: hard and to win. A basketball injury that limited him to designated hitting duties his senior year likely prevented him from being drafted in the first or second round.

"He was a really high-energy kid," said Jason McLeod, the Red Sox director of amateur scouting at the time. "Ryan was one of those kids that was going to run through a brick wall. He played so hard every day that you needed to tell him to pump the brakes now and then."

"He just loved to play. He was a throwback," said Red Sox scout Ray Fagnant.

After beginning his pro career in the rookie Gulf Coast League, Kalish was promoted to the Spinners in late August, playing at Fenway Park in the Futures at Fenway doubleheader in his debut and beating out two infield hits.

Kalish began the 2007 season with the Spinners and tore up the New York-Penn League. In mid-July he became the first Lowell minor-leaguer in 106 years to drill three or more hits in four consecutive games, which included reaching base in 11 consecutive plate appearances. He was second in the NY-PL batting race with a .368 average while smacking four doubles, a triple, and three homers and stealing 18 bases with 27 runs scored in just 23 games when he broke the hamate bone in his right wrist on a checked swing.

It would not be the last season-ending injury of his career.

But just over three years later he was playing in the outfield for the Red Sox after having hit .294 with 18 doubles, 13 homers, and 25 steals in 78 games for Portland and Pawtucket.

"He's been one of the most exciting players I've seen at this level," said his manager at Pawtucket, Torey Lovullo. "He's in a position to make a big impact at the major-league level. He offers so many intangibles it makes him a complete player and a potential superstar. I think he's going to be a spectacular player for a lot of years."

In his third game with the Red Sox Kalish went 3-for-3, threw out a runner at the plate, and was involved in a violent collision with rookie Cleveland catcher Carlos Santana at home. Kalish was dazed for a moment and slow to get up, but Santana didn't get up at all. He was carried from the field on stretcher, suffering from torn ligaments in his knee.

Those plays immediately endeared Kalish to Red Sox fans. He hit .252 with 11 doubles, four homers -- two of them grand slams -- and stole 10 bases in 53 games while scoring 26 runs and knocking in 24.

Since then, however, it's been one disabling injury after another.

"You hear about guys' careers and how injuries can shorten them, and mine, obviously, is one of them so far," Kalish said in that radio interview in Virginia. "You never know when your last game is going to be."

He hopes his last game is still years into the future.

"You have a dream as a kid that baseball will work out and you can be an All-Star. I'm going to get healthy," he vowed this week, "and who knows what will happen?

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